As location becomes an ever growing component in many personal services (e.g., geo-fencing, automated check-ins, location-based-advertisements, realtime social location sharing, etc.), the technology behind collecting, distributing, and acting on location updates still suffers from technological limitations. One of the most evident limitations is reduced battery life.
In the context of a cell phone, continuous location sampling currently requires an active microprocessor state on the phone. This in turn prevents the phone from entering a deep sleep state and blocks the advanced power saving options from engaging. This is true even if Wi-Fi hotspots or cell-tower ID triangulation is used instead of GPS.
Furthermore, many scenarios require that the user's location be transmitted to a web service (e.g., group location sharing, find my phone, dynamic query geo-fencing, etc.). In these cases, even radical hardware-based power improvements to the location acquisition on the device will not remove the need to establish an ongoing or frequent connection. These connections, using either cellular or Wi-Fi technologies, inflict yet another considerable power drain on the mobile device.